Horses of Michal Gabriel on Šabata Square

These horses are cast in bronze. Horses made from laminate were used as the forms for the bronze castings. One of these laminate templates is a part of the freely accessible garden of the Villa Pellé, a building maintained by the City of Prague Museum.

Upon completing the Applied Arts High School, Michal Gabriel studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1987, along with other artists he co-founded an informal group called Tvrdohlaví (Stubborn). From 1998 he worked as an Associate Professor at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Brno University of Technology, where he served as a Dean between 2007–2010. He teaches at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In 1995 he received the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award for his work.

With his focus on animal sculptures, it is not surprising that the collaboration on the artistic decoration of the Indonesian Jungle Pavilion at the Prague ZOO is among his most significant works. He is also involved in helping save the breed of Hucul Ponies at Janova Hora in the Krkonoše Mountains.

Horse sculptures are Michal Gabriel’s personal project that happened to perfectly fit into the timing of the competition for the completion of the water cascade space in Prague’s Dejvice quarter. His horses have a linear texture, different from the typical surface of his other sculptures, known as the peanut-shell finish.